Patriots’ budget restructuring likely just beginning

Sunday

Mar 2, 2014 at 5:51 PM

Steve Gregory was the first Patriot to fall victim to the team’s financial belt tightening this year, but he almost certainly will not be the last.The Pats cut the veteran safety on Friday for the same...

By PAUL KENYON

Steve Gregory was the first Patriot to fall victim to the team’s financial belt tightening this year, but he almost certainly will not be the last.

The Pats cut the veteran safety on Friday for the same reason others are likely to be released over the next month — because the team felt he made too much money.

Gregory did a solid job in the two years he played for New England but he carried a salary cap number of $2.85 million for 2014 — a number New England officials obviously felt was too high.

It is now four years into the new salary cap era under the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, enough time to analyze how teams are dealing with the financial restrictions.

There are some, like Dallas, New Orleans and Washington, which have spent heavily going to and even above the cap numbers and then dealt with the consequences later. There are others, such as Cincinnati, Buffalo and Tampa Bay, which have been reluctant to spend much of anything and have stayed well below the cap.

New England, it seems, has been more like a typical middle class family, at least a sensible middle class family that tries to balance current needs with future requirements.

The Pats have not been afraid to spend money on free agents, something they have done with very mixed results. But at the same time they have been careful not to spend everything. They have maintained what might be called a contingency fund to deal with issues that might pop up unexpectedly.

Once the season ends, the Pats and all NFL teams can restructure their budgets.

They have a benefit the baseball people do not have. In baseball, contracts are guaranteed. So many long-term deals have turned into disasters for teams.

In football, the numbers do not mean as much. A contract might be announced as a $20-million or $30-million deal, but frequently — as was evidenced in Gregory’s situation — it never gets to that point.

These days, players focus more on their signing bonus, which is guaranteed money, than money down the road. Receiving a big signing bonus is the way the players can protect themselves.

Teams have more options. They can do what the Patriots did with Gregory and simply release a player to save money on the salary cap. Or they can do what they did with Tom Brady last year, re-work a contract to make it more cap friendly and spread it out over a longer period.

In the next month or so, it is expected that a number of Patriots could have their deal redone or simply be released.

Vince Wilfork, who carries an $11.6-million cap number, Tommy Kelly, Isaac Sopoaga and Dan Connolly all look to be candidates to have their contracts reworked. Even guys like Logan Mankins, Jerod Mayo, Stephen Gostkowski and Matthew Slater could be asked to redo their deals to help the cap numbers.

Dealing with the salary cap has become an area of study not just for each team, but for fans, as well. In New England, one fan, Miguel Benzan, has become one of the leading sources of expertise on the cap. Just last week, at his website site, Patscap.com, Benzan compiled a detailed list of moves the Patriots could make to save cap space. These are a few of them:

Release Sopoaga for a net cap savings of $2.08 million.

Release Connolly and have a cap savings of $2.58 million or extend Connolly through the 2015 season, converting $2 million of his $3 million salary into a signing bonus for a cap savings of $1 million.

Reduce Wilfork’s salary from $7.5 million to $4 million while converting $3.5 million of his salary into an incentive for a cap savings of $3.5 million; release Wilfork to save $7.58 million on the cap; or extend Wilfork through the 2016 season, converting $6 million of his $7.5 million salary into a signing bonus to save $4 million.

Convert $4.5 million of Mankins’ $6.5-million salary into a signing bonus to save $3 million on the cap while pushing out $1.5 million of signing bonus proration to the 2015 and 2016 seasons.

Extend Gostkowski’s contract by four years while giving him a $5-million signing bonus and lowering his salary from $2.9 million to $900,000, a cap savings of $1 million.

The need to restructure deals or release players was reduced somewhat over the weekend when the league made the cap number for next season official. It will jump from the $123 million figure used in 2013 to $133 in 2014, the largest single season increase since 2006.

Back when the collective bargaining agreement was reached in 2011, the players union was criticized by some for not getting enough out of the contract. Union officials argued at the time that the biggest benefits would come when the new television contracts kicked in. That is happening now. That argument has proven to hold merit as evidenced by the $10 million jump. It also has been announced that the cap will swell to $140 million in 2015 and $150 million in 2016, all of which will provide significant boosts to the players.

The cap has grown in uneven jumps. Here are the numbers for the past decade, with the numbers in millions: In 2004, $80.5; 2005, $85; 2006, $102; 2007, $109; 2008, $116; 2009, $123; 2010, uncapped because of the lack of a contract; 2011, $120; 2012 $120.6; 2013, $123.

Both the players and the teams seem to have adapted to the system. The goal for the league is to promote parity. That has worked for the most part. The Patriots have been the major exception with their run of 13 straight winning seasons.

The players have become businessmen who do their best within the system, even if it means losing their job as it did for Gregory last week. Gregory was nothing but class in telling ESPNBoston about his two years with the Patriots.

“I had a great time in New England and respect the organization a lot,” he told Mike Reiss of ESPNBoston.com. “It was time well-spent and I learned a lot. Obviously, you never want to get released from a team. There will be other opportunities and it’s on good terms.

“The fans were great. The whole atmosphere out there was unbelievable. It was a great time of my life that I’ll always remember,” Gregory said.

Year

Maximum Team Salary

2013

$123 million

2012

$120.6 million

2011

$120 million

2010

Uncapped

2009

$123 million

2008

$116 million

2007

$109 million

2006

$102 million

2005

$85.5 million

2004

$80.582 million

2003

$75.007 million

2002

$71.101 million

2001

$67.405 million

2000

$62.172 million

1999

$57.288 million

1998

$52.388 million

1997

$41.454 million

1996

$40.753 million

1995

$37.1 million

1994

$34.608 million

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